What is your teaching philosophy?

Being a tutor is a great way to guide a student through learning so that a student can discover and create with one-on-one guidance and inspiration for further inquiry and understanding.

What might you do in a typical first session with a student?

I would find out the prior knowledge the student has on their topic and their motivation to learn and improve. With that information, I can tailor my teaching to their learning ability and motivation.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

By inspiring intrinsic motivation. When students find a task exciting or a subject interesting, they can push themselves to work harder and longer to accomplish their goal, less daunted. Also, giving students small, achievable goals to reach builds a sense of accomplishment and decreases the fear associated with large or difficult tasks.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Laughter always works well! So do good explanations. Students thrive when they understand and believe the reasons behind why they are working hard at something.

If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?

Try to teach it to them in different ways, draw on their own experiences, and chunk down the information into digestible bites.

How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?

Having students record themselves reading stories. This helps them build fluency through repetition and dual channel processing.

What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?

Building the student's autonomy. When they feel they have a hold of their own learning, their confidence grows and so do their academic capabilities.

How would you help a student get excited/engaged with a subject that they are struggling in?

By having them be successful at first in small steps, then on a larger, faster scale. Once a student feels confident, their excitement and motivation will grow too.

What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?

Probing questions and autonomous support.

How do you build a student's confidence in a subject?

Starting small and slow at first, where the student has small successes in their learning. By increasing a student's success with difficult material, their confidence in themselves and in the subject grows, but more importantly, their overall confidence to take on difficult tasks grows as well.

How do you evaluate a student's needs?

By checking their understanding and ability level regularly.

How do you adapt your tutoring to the student's needs?

By getting to know each student and their interests, and building their confidence along with their ability.

What types of materials do you typically use during a tutoring session?

It depends on the student! This can range anywhere from sidewalk chalk to a computer.